I have a confession to make: I don’t always read the comments on posts by Men’s Rights Activists.
I realize this might come as a shock to some of you. I mean, one of the main, er, critiques I get from MRAs is that I “cherry pick” comments from MRAs to make them look bad — never mind that it is the comments that make them look bad, not me. But the embarrassing fact is that I often don’t read the comments at all.
In my defense, I have a hard enough time making it through the posts themselves. Life is short, and MRAs are long-winded. And by the time I get to the end of a lot of MRA posts, I’ve pretty much lost my patience with their nonsense. The last thing I want to do at that moment is to read the fawning word-vomit of a bunch of irritating fucks whose comments are likely to be as bad or possibly even worse than the original post.
So today I decided to do a sort of penance for my sins — and to actually read through a week’s worth of comments on A Voice for Men to see what I could learn about the world, and (perhaps more to the point) about the sort of people who actually enjoy reading posts on that terrible site.
I tried my best to do this little experiment as scientifically as possible. But I cheated a little. I didn’t read the comments to every post. And I didn’t read every comment on the posts that I did look at. I mean, what the hell. There’s a limit to my masochism. Seriously, you try reading a week’s worth of this shit in one sitting.
Anyway, here are the Top 7 Insights I’ve learned from a week’s worth of comments at AVFM. In choosing the following, I stuck with comments that were either upvoted or unchallenged by the site’s regulars, or both.
1) Feminists literally want women to be able to kill men with no repercussions.
In the comments to an allegedly humorous post about the female “rationalization hamster,” Angelo sets us straight about the real agenda of feminists and their mangina allies:
2) Most young females are vile pigs.
This one, from a post about Men’s Rights Edmonton’s harassment of noble human rights activism towards that city’s Slut Walk, is pretty self-explanatory. Take it away, jbantifem:
3) It is “female nature” to falsely accuse men of rape. In another comment on that female “rationalization hamster” post, TheMaskAndRose praises AVFM for running articles addressing the important issue of women being dirty lying you know whats.
4) Women are “vipers” with credit cards
In the comments of a post meditating on the notion of privilege (or something, I didn’t read it), l jess warns men not to get involved with women at all. Because of that viper thing.
5) Don’t marry women because they’re selfish narcissists who won’t let you have a model train set
In the comments to a novella-length post detailing one man’s legal battles with his ex, John Durant reveals that his mother wouldn’t let him have a model train set. And he shares the lesson he took from this childhood tragedy: Avoid women at all costs.
6) Attractive women have no need nor desire for feminism. Or maybe they do? After praising the looks of an antifeminist YouTuber, Sway draws the only possible conclusion from this evidence. Or is it the only possible conclusion? I’m not sure what to believe.
7) Women have too many feelings to be engineers
In yet another comment on that “rationalization hamster post,” Roby 83 compares women — inherently emotional and opinionated — with men — more adept in “objective reasoning.”
There is perhaps a teensy bit of irony in the fact that Roby 83 has chosen to post this comment on A Voice for Men, a site run by, and overflowing with, men who think that their tantrums are rational arguments.
And I think that’s my cue to end this little experiment.
I felt this way before I was acquainted with reddit.
Felinism, I like it! (Would that be the worship of Ceiling Cat, or Basement Cat, and their minions?)
This site takes the angle-brackets html route for doing blockquotes, DJG. Catches so many people!
@ saphy – Have you never heard of The Wrath of the Lemming Men? http://www.fantasybookreview.co.uk/Toby-Frost/Wrath-of-the-Lemming-Men.html
@bunnybunny : I just finished reading it. That was… horrific. It’s a really well-written story, just scary.
(TW: Rape) A tiny bit of good news:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/23/montanas-top-court-suspends-judge-who-blamed-14-year-old-girl-for-being-raped/
@cloudiah: That judge looks like a real winner. Good that he didn’t get away with it, what he said, and the sentence he gave to that rapist teacher, was unforgivable.
Some of your stories about douche guys made me think of this tumblr. http://straightwhiteboystexting.tumblr.com/ A lot of them are just the usual sexual proposition 2 seconds into a convo, but you also see a lot of man-children going from “hey sexy” to “fuck you whore i hate you” within the span of the word no.
Apologize if its too off topic, but it is a pretty hilarious-in-a-sad-way blog, me thinks.
at least these stupid mra’s are in agreement to not breed thank fuck for that. Them staying away from women makes it easier to find the good guys
Schwadevivre: all I can focus on is the shadow-shape on the right hand side of that highly pixelated book cover which looks like a giant flourishing moustache floating in the distance.
Shouldn’t have read that story at work. Now I’m swinging between impressed at the writing, pondering the moral implications, and just depressed as all get-out.
If you really have a yen for war hamsters…
i, Obtain Civilization 4,
ii, Download the Rise from Erebus mod from here
– http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=360
iii, Run it, ensuring the launcher includes the Hamstalfar module.
iv, Go nuts.
And if you’re depressed about “All My Darling Daughters” (which is, after all, a story and one predicated on a jaundiced view of the XY half of the species), then I prescribe Nick Harkaway’s _Goneaway World_, Cory Doctrow’s _For The Win_ as a remedy. Don’t you owe it to yourself to find out why ninjas are afraid of tupperware?
Stories can be affecting even if they are fictional. I don’t think people relating to or meditating on the themes of abuse and self-blame is frivolous. Yikes.
Being a librarian, I don’t disagree – I didn’t use the word “frivolous”. Willis captures A truth, but by no means the WHOLE truth.
This John whatsit’s mother told him to save his money? What a narcissistic b*tch! Misandry!
I feel like the story has more to say about the awfulness of a world that humans can create for themselves than it did about any innate ‘badness’ of men. I don’t think it requires a negative view of dude-kind to approach these kinds of ideas about human depravity: I feel that it’s set up as a cultural thing, a bad morality reinforced through generations of a broken society with advanced technology.
To supplement the war hamsters and armoured guinea pig, I bring you the HEDGEHOG VICTORIOUS!
https://www.facebook.com/itsthemetapicture/photos/a.387644671313623.87403.129488340462592/662311643846923/?type=1
Squee! Love hedgehogs.
I’m not sure if I would rather believe that Wrath of the Lemming Men is a real book, or that that review is a brilliant piece of fiction. Either makes me smile.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you – the Assault Gerbil.
Am unusually annoyed by this today. Another full bingo card of sexist dumbfuckery
-feminists are anti man. Check
-not getting the point of slut walk, check.
which is so painfully easy to understand that it’s got fuckall to do with sluts getting together to flaunt their scanty fashion choices
-irrational fear of false accusations and the myth of buyers’ remorse. Check.
Odd choice of words since they’re the ones always thinking of sex as a transaction where men are the buyer.
-women after money, blah blah
-ladybrains can’t reason, can’t math, emotional wrecks, blah blah
Notice this has fuckall to do with hating feminism (or straw feminism) and everything to do with hating women. With none of these being challenged or down voted, id
say they can’t claim they don’t hate women. At all.
On any given day of the week during any time of the year, you can find those comments all over mrm places. All written slightly different, of course. Because everyone knows mras don’t parot at all with their bullshit!
You could miss a year and not miss a single thing. Lmao
That assault gerbil seems to be sleeping on the job. No treats for her until she learns to shape up and stay focused.
That’s not an assault gerbil, it’s an assault hamster!
How do you tell the difference? I’m pretty much lost when it comes to telling one rodent from another, unless one of them is a nutrium.
She’s a Stealth Assault Hamster. She waits until you’re lulled by her sleepy face and overcome with D’awww, then strikes.